Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Happy Holidays!

2005; Elsevier BV; Volume: 31; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jen.2005.10.016

1527-2966

Gail Pisarcik Lenehan,

Trauma and Emergency Care Studies

This is an important time to remember our colleagues serving overseas, away from family and friends, and in harm's way. For the third year, the Journal pays tribute to military nurses—US Navy nurses for this issue. An email from a military surgeon, Col. Brett Wyrick, on page 577 brings home a picture of just how much respect the emergency teams in Iraq and elsewhere deserve. No matter how we feel about the war, emergency nurses everywhere join in supporting the individuals who serve. Military nurses were among those who provided assistance and support with the recent US hurricanes. We are indebted to Iris Frank who enthusiastically helped emergency nurses from across the country share their stories and lessons learned in this issue. We are certain there are many more stories, so we invite others to write us about their "lessons learned," from this or others, in the form of a letter or article. Emergency nurses also shared many of their lessons learned at a recent conference, the 5th International Conference for Emergency Nurses in Sydney, Australia. It is interesting to go half way around the world, only to find things to be so similar. Our colleagues "down under" may be experiencing summer during our winter, but they share the same frustrations and gratifications as emergency nurses in the United States. The commonalities are oddly comforting. Someone experiencing an MI or someone who is intoxicated looks exactly the same, no matter where they are. It's always been striking how fundamentally "at home" and capable any American ED nurse would feel in any ED I've ever visited. American nurses would instantly grasp who was sick and what a team member needed, as would any Australian ED nurse in the US. The conference topics were all familiar. One Australian emergency nurse ( [email protected] ), concerned about the rights of nurses and patients, reported on using a client information leaflet to reduce the incidence of violence in the emergency department. The leaflet explained the reason for waits, and noted that staff could have abusive [verbal as well as physical] persons charged by the police and removed from the ED. Consequently, violence in that ED dropped by 52%. Over lunch one day, an experienced Australian ED nurse mentioned a recent episode: a disadvantaged teenage girl, on drugs and alcohol, who jumped up and down on a stretcher one night, screaming demands. Reluctant to seem heavy handed, and trying to avoid reading about the incident on the front page of the next day's newspaper, the helpless staff tried cajoling and pleading with the patient. An elderly woman with a hip fracture lay just inches away. We all face challenges every day—some that make the news and some that we hope don't. The frustrations participants shared were balanced by the many promising new initiatives, roles, and solutions that were discussed, and a touch of humor. My favorite slide? A military medical apparatus sign: "This machine has no brain. Use your own!" Accounts of the work of those responding to the bombings in Bali, the tsunami in Banda Aceh and the Maldives, a helicopter crash, and the war in Iraq were reminders of the ultimate gratification that ED nurses all share. Happy holidays from JEN to emergency nurses around the globe. May we never forget the sacrifices of our colleagues at this time, and may the gratifying moments of 2006 far outweigh the frustrations.